Transcript Interactionism and Labelling Theory File

Interactionism and Labelling
Theory
Do not look at how social systems and
social structures direct behaviour.
Look at how people interact in terms of
meanings and definitions.
Becker
• Deviance is the result of the interaction
between 2 groups in society – deviants
and non-deviants.
• Any act can be defined as deviant if
one group of people can successfully
apply the label of deviant to another
label.
Who can apply the label?
• An act only becomes deviant when
others perceive and define it as such.
• Teachers, the police and the mass
media can apply labels.
• Stereotypical images are established
and predictions can be made about
future behaviour.
People respond differently to
deviance.
• Kitsuse (1962) interviewed 75
heterosexual students to elicit their
responses to (presumed) sexual
advances from gays.
• Responses ranged from complete
tolerance to bizarre and extreme
hatred.
Most people commit deviants
acts of some kind
• Only some people are caught and
stigmatised for it.
• Labelling theorists look at the reaction
to and definition of deviance.
• Once labelled various consequences
occur for the individual
Lemert
• PRIMARY DEVIANCE
The widespread acts of deviance we all
engage in at some time during our lives but
do not lead to public labelling.
• SECONDARY DEVIANCE
Labelling theorists are concerned with this
form of deviance. Public labelling leads to
problems for individuals forcing them to
embark on secondary deviance.
Societal Reaction
• The way others react to someone
labelled as deviant may have a
dramatic effect on that person’s status
and identity and may lead to further
deviant acts.
• Labelling people as deviant will tend to
mark them out.
• Deviant becomes their ‘master status’
which overrides all other statuses.
• The individual is seen as a criminal rather
than a father, friend or worker.
• May be rejected by conventional society and
embark on a deviant career.
• Public labelling may result in a self-fulfilling
prophecy whereby the person labelled
deviant not only commits further deviant acts
but also accepts the label.
Jock Young
• Studied marihuana users in Notting Hill
during the 1960s.
• The police targeting of a group whose
lifestyle included smoking marihuana
served to widen the differences
between the hippies and conventional
society.
• In the process, drug taking, which had
been ‘essentially a peripheral activity’
became of ‘greater value to the group
as a symbol of their difference and of
their defiance against perceived
injustices’ Young 1971.
• A deviant subculture developed.
• Saw themselves as different from nondrug takers.
Reiss (1961)
• Some can reject the label.
• Reiss studied young male prostitutes.
• Although they engaged in homosexual
behaviour, they regarded what they did
as work and maintained their image of
themselves as being ‘straight’ despite
engaging in sex with men.
Reiner, 1994
• Acts labelled as deviant tend to be
committed by certain types of people.
• Police target certain groups.
• Police have perceptions of the ‘typical
criminal’.
• Young men from lower social classes
and from certain ethnic minority
groups.
Cicourel, 1976
• Police and juvenile probation officers in
California saw the ‘typical delinquent’ as
‘coming from broken homes, exhibiting “bad
attitudes” towards authority, poor school
performance, ethnic group membership, lowincome families and the like’.
• Young people who fitted this picture were
more likely to be arrested and charged.
Cicourel – Negotiation of Justice
• Police stop and search someone on the
interpretation of a ‘suspicious character’
• May lead arrest depending on the
appearance and manner of the person
questioned.
• If arrested further action may depend on
details of home background, school report.
• If charged and prosecuted the outcome may
rest on the same factors.
Cohen and Short
• The label deviant is less likely to be
applied to middle-class youths.
• The act may be the same but the
meaning is different eg a sprawl
Evaluation - Advantages
• Drawn attention to the importance of
labelling and societal reaction.
• These processes can generate deviance.
• Shows that certain types of people are
singled out for labelling.
• Shows that labelling results from the
definitions and perceptions of the agents of
social control, from their perceptions of the
typical deviant.
Evaluation - Disadvantages
• Do not look for the origins of deviance.
• Does not explain why some types of
people are labelled as deviants rather
than others. Where do the definitions
come from.
• Does not consider who makes the rules
whose infraction constitute deviance.
Who makes the rules?
Amplification of Deviance
• Sociologists who do not share the
same theoretical perspectives as the
interactionists have also looked at
societal reaction.
• Stan Cohen (1987) looked at societal
reaction to disturbances involving
mods and rockers which took place at
Clacton in 1964.
• The mass media represented these
disturbances as a confrontation
between rival gangs ‘hell bent on
destruction’.
• However Cohen discovered that the
amount of serious violence and
vandalism was not great and most
young people who were there did not
identify with either mods or rockers.
• The mass media had presented a distorted
picture of what had happened.
• Media coverage led to considerable public
concern which led to deviance amplification.
• Police became sensitised to the problem and
this led to more arrests, the media reported
more deviance and young people were more
likely to identify with either mods or rockers.